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Cardboard bike unveiled (video)
BBC
What could be the ultimate in green transport has gone on display in Sheffield after being dreamt up by a student.
(16 June 2008)
Not a joke – design student shows a model that he estimates could be sold for 15 pounds apiece. -BA
Air Canada cutting 2,000 jobs, trimming capacity
CBC News
Air Canada said Tuesday it plans to eliminate 2,000 jobs and reduce its capacity as the company joins the list of airlines cutting back in the face of higher fuel prices.
Air Canada also hinted that more capacity cuts may be necessary if fuel costs remain at their current levels.
The country’s biggest carrier said it will reduce its overall capacity by seven per cent in the last three months of this year and the first quarter of 2009.
The airline said fuel prices have more than doubled over the past year, and that a $1-per-barrel increase in the price of oil adds $26 million to its annual fuel bill.
(17 June 2008)
Cargo ships told to go green by slowing down
Juliette Jowit, The Observer
Lumbering across the world’s oceans at a leisurely pace, they seem relatively blameless compared with planes or lorries. But the role of cargo ships in exacerbating climate change is about to come under scrutiny. The solution? Slow down.
Speed limits in the world’s shipping lanes will be proposed today by Ruth Kelly, the transport secretary, when she announces plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Studies suggest that, although ships use less fuel than planes or lorries to carry a tonne of cargo, the industry is so big that it accounts for up to 4.5 per cent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prominent greenhouse gas.
(15 June 2008)
The Future of Air Travel
Cameron Leckie, The Oil Drum: Austrialia/New Zealand
The organisation that I work for depends upon air travel for the movement of several thousand trainees around the country each year. I have been working on some peak oil risk management/mitigation strategies and the future of air travel is a key requirement that needs to be explored. This is a start on identifying the prospects for air travel in the post peak oil world. Ironically, this essay was planned whilst flying from Brisbane to Melbourne for one of this organisation’s courses.
… Those aware of peak oil have oft claimed that airlines would be the first victim of peak oil, as stated by the late Dr Samsam Bakhtiari. The peak oil e-mail group Running on Empty Australia (or ROEOZ) almost daily has posts titled ‘airline deathwatch.’ The recent attention paid in the media to higher oil prices and the actions of airlines in raising surcharges and reducing capacity leads to the question of how sustainable is air travel and airlines in a post peak oil future. This will be the first in a series of posts on the future of air travel and will focus on fuel economy.
The fuel economy of an aircraft is dependent upon a number of factors. These include the aircrafts aerodynamic efficiency, weight efficiency, the number of passengers carried and the fuel efficiency of the engines. As oil prices have risen, airlines have attempted to increase the fuel economy of their fleets in a number of ways.
(17 June 2008)
Gaza ‘genius’ helps besieged city survive a year of Israel’s blockade
Donald Macintyre, Independent
… Gaza’s famous entrepreneurial spirit has not yet been snuffed out by the draconian economic blockade imposed by Israel after the Palestinian militant group Hamas seized full control of the Strip by force a year ago tomorrow.
Since then, Gaza has seen continuing conflict, ever-deepening poverty, shortages, unemployment and despair. Against that background, the white Peugeot has become a symbol of Gaza’s suppressed potential. “People who have seen it are even happier than we are,” says Mr Annan. “They see it as something to be proud of in Gaza, which they haven’t had in a long time.”
Six months in the conception and making, this prototype conversion of the French saloon into Gaza’s first electric car – powered by an AC induction motor and 38 12-volt batteries under the bonnet and in the boot – is an engineering triumph in a city starved of almost every commodity, including spare parts.
It is not just a dramatic improvement on the smelly, heavily polluting and motor-corroding substitution of cooking oil for diesel that increasing numbers of desperate drivers are opting for here. For as Gaza plunges back in time and into what economists call de-development, with many people swapping their cars for donkey carts because of fuel shortages, it could just be that its best electrical minds have seen the future – and it works.
(13 June 2008)
